Category Archives: Music

I had been vaguely aware for some time that there existed in London in the eighteenth century a harpsichord-maker called Burkat Shudi. On 12 March I noticed that his date of birth was 13 March 1702. On 13 March I … Continue reading →

In the Western Christian churches, Advent is the period of four weeks (or so) before Christmas Day, beginning on the Sunday closest to the feast of St Andrew on 30 November. This year it falls on 27 November, and may … Continue reading →

I tend to fight shy of opining about music, since it’s an area where I feel even more fraudulently incompetent than usual, but I am going to make an exception for the wonderful concert I attended last Saturday. Advertisements

What I know about the Tractarian controversy of the nineteenth century could be written on the head of a very tiny pin and is mostly drawn from the fiction of Antony Trollope (though I have no reason to believe he’s … Continue reading →

Last Christmas, the Cambridge Library Collection reissued Songs of the Nativity, Being Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern, edited by William Henry Husk (1814–87), a solicitor’s clerk and amateur singer who was librarian of the Sacred Harmonic Society in London. (He … Continue reading →

This month’s object is a bit of a cheat. It is held by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, but is not currently on display – nor, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when he viewed it in 1833, should it ever have … Continue reading →

Him Indoors is trying to persuade me that what we really need to make us happy in our declining years is the expenditure of large amounts of money in order to recondition his piano, made by the great firm of … Continue reading →